Activity over the weekend has increased the likelihood that Mount St.Helens could errupt again in the near future. All of this after we have just come back from looking at the NZ volcanoes, Kira was a little freaked out before we left because she saw the Mt Tarawerra erruptions in a TV documentary about the natural wonders of the world. After visiting the buried village and learning a bit more about the geothermal areas, she is a lot more interested in the subject …

Yesterday visitors to Mount St. Helens witnessed a 30-minute-long steam-and-ash emission starting at 9:43 a.m. PDT and a 10- minute-long steam-and-ash emission starting at 14:10 p.m. PDT. The larger one dusted roads to the the SE of the volcano with ash. Maximum thickness of the ash at 8 km (about 5 miles) was 0.2 mm (less than 1/8 of an inch). Neither event generated earthquakes or an explosion signal. We infer that hot rock was pushed up into the glacier, melted ice, and generated the steam. Part of the vent for yesterday’s and other steam and ash emissions of the past few days is now covered by a bubbling lake. Since yesterday’s emissions, earthquake energy has slowly increased to previous high values.

MOUNT ST. HELENS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Wash. – Mount St. Helens again blew off a spectacular cloud of steam and ash Tuesday. The burst sent a roiling, dark gray cloud thousands of feet above the mountain before it streamed several miles to the northeast.